Thursday, January 1, 2015

A Funny Old Dream

I
had a funny dream last night. I must have eaten too many mince pies
or something.

It
started with lots of people writing to their MSPs about what more
spending on active travel would mean for them. Letters and emails
from the 30% of children who want to cycle to school but can't
because the conditions aren't
right,
from the adults who want to get fitter but find the roads too
intimidating to walk or cycle, from the health professionals who are
tired of treating the effects of too little exercise on a population
whose towns and cities are laid out in a way to discourage them from
traveling anywhere on their own two feet.

And
my MSP, Jim Eadie, took up the cause, and told parliament about the
great things that Edinburgh city council would do for active travel
if they could get partial funding from the Scottish government. He
told them about proposed links from Haymarket to the segregated cycle
lane on George street that would make it possible for people arriving
by train to do the last part of their commute by bike. He told
them about the proposal to link the other end of George street
to the bike lane on Leith Walk, making a continuous link from
Haymarket down to the foot of the walk possible. And he told them
about things that are already in motion in Edinburgh, such as family friendly routes from the canal to the meadows, and then on to the old
Innocent railway path. MSPs from Glasgow chipped in to say that their
local council has a commendable strategy for local transport that
won't go anywhere without matched funding.

Some
questioned whether it could be right to spend money on luxuries such
as active travel when the NHS is in crisis, but my MSP replied that,
as every good doctor knows, it's better to treat a cause than a
symptom, and that inactivity is costing the Scottish NHS 94 million per year. Some argued that Scotland does not have the money to spend,
but my MSP pointed out that the money being on one road project alone
could be used to provide 10 pounds per head spending on active travel
for the next sixty years! This isn't about the money available to
Holyrood, it's about the choices that Holyrood makes. He showed them
the Department for Transport statistics that show a 5.5 to 1 return on
investment for building cycle lanes. Some argued that the
responsibility lay not with the Scottish parliament but with
Westminster, my MSP explained that transport was a devolved issue,
and that, despite fine visions and soaring rhetoric, the current
Scottish government finds its policies on active travel less
progressive than those of Edinburgh city council, less progressive
than those of Boris Johnson, less progressive than those of
Westminster, less progressive even than those of The Times of London.
He said that people love it when the SNP promises a greener,
healthier Scotland, but that it needs to back up its promises with
action.

And
so, remarkably, the Scottish parliament pledged not only to properly
fund investment in infrastructure for active travel for Scotland this
year, but guaranteed that this funding would be maintained in the
years to come. And councils were able to make long term plans, safe
in the knowledge that money for investment in cycle lanes would be
significant and sustained, and a great network of cycle lanes was
built throughout the land.

Now
this is where the dream started to get interesting. Because cycle
lanes make the roads less intimidating for all users, the number of
pedestrians increased dramatically. The roads became safer for everyone. And since bikes and buses no
longer slowed each other down, bus journey times decreased, and congestion decreased for all road users, and so the air pollution
levels in Scotland, which kill 2000 people a year, began to
decrease. Bike lanes even made journey times shorter for car drivers.

Local
shops found that, for the first time in a generation, it really was
possible for large numbers of shoppers to get quickly and
conveniently to the centre of town, and just as is happening on
George street which has seen footfall up 9% since the bike lane was
installed, sales grew. And so our city centres beat off the challenge
of out of town shopping and internet sales, because they had once
again become pleasant places to spend time and money.

And
so the politicians were lauded for having taken such a simple,
effective and astonishingly cheap step to build a better Scotland.
Scotland was greener, happier and healthier, and my MSP was reelected
with a large majority.

Anyway,
funny old dream it was. I must have eaten too many mince pies or
something.